cleanly and thoroughly done. Everything is taken down and put away;
throughout the leafy arcades the branches show no remnant of last year,
save a few twisted leaves of oak and beech, a few empty seed-vessels of
the tardy witch-hazel, and a few gnawed nutshells dropped coquettishly
by the squirrels into the crevices of the bark. All else is bare, but
prophetic: buds everywhere, the whole splendor of the coming summer
concentrated in those hard little knobs on every bough; and clinging
here and there among them, a brown, papery chrysalis, from which shall
yet wave the superb wings of the Luna moth. An occasional shower patters
on the dry leaves, but it does not silence the robin on the outskirts of
the wood: indeed, he sings louder than ever, though the song-sparrow and
the bluebird are silent.

Then comes the sweetness of the nights in latter April. There is as yet
no evening-primrose to open suddenly, no cistus to drop its petals;
but the May-flower knows the hour, and becomes more fragrant in the
darkness, so that one can then often find it in the woods without
aid from the eye. The pleasant night-sounds are begun; the hylas are
uttering their shrill _peep_ from the meadows, mingled soon with hoarser
toads, who take to the water at this season to deposit their spawn. The
tree-toads soon join them; but one listens in vain for bullfrogs, or
katydids, or grasshoppers, or whippoorwills, or crickets: we must wait
for them until the delicious June.

The earliest familiar token of the coming season is the expansion of the
stiff catkins of the alder into soft, drooping tresses. These are so
sensitive, that, if you pluck them at almost any time during the winter,
a day's bright sunshine will make them open in a glass of water, and
thus they eagerly yield to every moment of April warmth. The blossom
of the birch is more delicate, that of the willow more showy, but the